The End of the Line...

It's over.  My six week study abroad is finished and I'm celebrating in a hostel in Florence with Andy, who is sleeping off his plane ride next to me as I write.  I told him to sleep on the plane but, apparently, that's difficult when you're surrounded by a school's worth of high school students, particularly when they won't shut up and sleep themselves.

The last week at Santa Chiara was pretty calm.  We stayed in Castiglion Fiorentino all week so that people could work on their group presentations and the class photography exhibit, which was on Tuesday.  It went pretty well, I think.  I was in a mood not fit for company, so I spent the time up in my room watching the Disney Animated Hercules and listening to the people in the courtyard below.

Wednesday was the first day of group presentations including the one for the group I was in.  One group went earlier in the day and discussed the roads.  After that we had a break and headed on a half hour hike to a nearby vineyard called La Pievuccia.  They organically grow, process, and bottle a variety of wines as well as olive oil and honey.  The owner took us on a tour of the wine making area, although they won't be doing any processing until the harvest in September, and discussed how they grow their plants, why they chose to be organic, and even slightly more natural than organic, as they process without chemicals, as well.  He, apparently, doesn't like Californian wine because in the states wine is something people drink on its own, so it needs to have certain flavors, but here, wine is designed to be eaten with food, so it is much more subtle.

 Olive orchards at La Pievuccia.

After the tour, we sat down to a tasting, with food, of course, little flower shaped pizzas were served with a light white wine, bruschetta with tomatoes and cheese and crostini with an olive paste came with the rose wine, and very good salami and bresaola with a nice bread came with the red.  Somewhere in the middle there were pieces of cheese topped with a plum sauce or a very light honey.  The last taste was of their vin santo, a very concentrated wine that ages for at least five years, I think, in warm temperatures.  It's made from grapes that have been picked and let dry almost to being raisins and tastes a lot like them.  It was served with biscotti, which wast to be dipped in the vin santo, as our TA, Erica, demonstrates in the image below.

Erica was always good for a laugh and a slightly (or entirely) inappropriate joke.

After the tasting, we had the opportunity to purchase some of the products we'd just tasted, and I took the opportunity to buy three bottles of the red wine because I know people at home who will enjoy it, a bottle of the vin santo because in small amounts, it's very nice, a jar of honey, and two bottles of olive oil.

While some of the students stayed to swim in the pool at the vineyard, the members of my group among a few others, opted to head back to Santa Chiara.  On the way back, I took the opportunity to snap some photos.  I took the one below of the Montecchio Vesponi Castle nearby as we were so much closer to it than at Santa Chiara.

The Castle of Montecchio Vesponi

As I was walking along, I saw some little chicks in an enclosure and found them quite cute but I didn't take any photos.  As I was wandering off, a man with lots of hair caught up to me in his white van and, in Italian, started saying something I imagine was something like, "Did you want to take photos of the chicks?" and "Come, come it's OK."  He led me over, gave me a prime spot overlooking the chickenwire mesh keeping the little fluffy things in, and urged me to take photos.  After a bit, he led me towards where the chickens and roosters were kept and urged me, again, to take photos, even suggesting I use a flash to get better shots but it was light enough, even in the shade to go without.  Then, as I was thanking him and heading off, he said something else I didn't understand and yelled to a younger man on the upper story porch to tell me something in English.  He asked if I could send them the photos if he gave me his email address so I told him that I would, and I did.  Here are a couple, one of some of the chicks, and one of a huge rooster with funny white feet.

Later, we gave our presentation with its scavenger hunt, awarded prizes to the winners, and went off to dinner.  Another group went after dinner and that was about it for me that day.  It had been long. At some point I did manage to get up to Cocoa Palm for gelato.

Lemon, Strawberry & Frutti di Bosco

Thursday started with another presentation followed by lunch then another presentation or two... or three... then we went off on another walk to La Pievuccia, this time for their dinner.  Apparently, it's common for some small wineries to offer dinners, or at least, they do there.  We'd been talking about doing it for almost the whole trip, so everyone was pretty excited.  We got semi-dressed up, as there'd be a long walk to get there, and headed out for dinner at eight.  The food was very nice, an appetizer plate with several offerings, lasagna, roasted pork with spinach and thin slices of potato, panna cotta covered with a mixed berry sauce, and your choice of vin santo, grapa, or Nocino, a walnut based liqueur.  I had the first, as I knew I liked it and grapa burns out my nose hairs and I'm not that huge a fan of walnuts. While the food was good, the best part was that we were sitting outside in the early evening with a nice breeze on a smal patio near the olive orchards.  Afterward we took a taxi (in batches) back to Santa Chiara.

Friday was composed almost entirely of packing and getting ready to leave, as I needed to take a train at around 11:30 to meet Andy in Florence on Saturday.  I had my last couple of meals at Santa Chiara, and enjoyed my last gelato at Cocoa Palm (mango, peach, and raspberry, I think); there's a photo on Henry I have to download at some point.

And that was that.  It was over, I was packed.  All that was lacking was a few hours and a few last minute chores like stripping my bed, picking up a bit of trash, and the last minute packing after the morning activities.  I said, and hugged, good bye some of the people still at the center, grabbed my bags and left for my last walk down the hill to the train station... and towards Florence and Andy.

Good bye, Santa Chiara.  Farewell, Castiglion Fiorentino.

Rome Day Two

In an attempt to just get this written so that I'm up to date, I'm going to try to keep this brief.  I've been procrastinating writing for the past three days because it seems like I have a lot to catch up on so rather than agonize about it further, I'm going to take the Band-Aid removal technique into hand and just do it... fast. 

Last post I discussed Monday, our long first day in Rome next up is Tuesday the 8th, which was a half day.  We met in the lobby of Hotel Tiziano at 8:30 after satisfying our hunger at the hotel's ample buffet breakfast of cereals, fruits, ham, cheese, bread, a variety of pastries and beverages.  Not the best spread I've seen but certainly varied.

Our locations for the day were all on the south side of the Tiber river in the Trastevere area.  Before getting down there, though, we stopped a couple blocks away from the Campo di Fiori to look at the facade of a building and I discovered my first Roman film crew.  According to a guy wearing a vest emblazoned with something like Hollywood Special Effects team, it wasn't a film shoot, merely something for publicity but it looked like a lot of setup for a publicity op.  They even had one of the giant fill lights that look like orbs and are used to light up the park at night during ACL. 

The first real stop was Santa Maria in Trastevere which was the home of many beautiful mosaics by Pietro Cavallini.  The ceiling was not lit very well but with my 1.8 lens on a half second exposure I was able to see the actual brightness of the ceiling's gold leaf and the panels filled with pink, green, and blue.  There was also a really nice statue of St. Anthony of Padua with notes all over it containing, I'm guessing, prayers and requests to the saint.

After that, we went over, very briefly to San Crisogono, a small chapel with beautiful floors and a dead lady in a glass box, like Snow White but old.  I think we found out later that she'd died in the mid1800s and was beatified in 1920.  She had a small altar and while we were there, a priest was holding a mini mass for about eight people.  At first I thought it was a funeral so I thought it would be impolite to take photos.

The last stop that day was Santa Cecilia in Trastevere.  It's choir loft houses a beautiful Cavallini fresco of the Last Judgement but getting to it is a bit of a challenge.  It requires talking to the nuns who live there (under a vow of silence) and getting permission to go up, eight at a time in their little elevator to see it.  It was worth it, as it was very pretty and the view down into the main section of the church was nice.  They also sell beautiful cards and nice lavender soap (I think they make them themselves) so I bought a brick of the latter.  Even just sitting in my room it perfumes the air.  The photo is the ceiling in the church but I'm not sure who painted it.

That was it for the class stuff that day.  I joined Ann and her boys and Lawrence for lunch at a small place that Ann was familiar with from her previous trips in and it was very good.  After that we walked over to the hotel that Lawrence will be staying at when he returns to Rome with his wife so he could show us (Ann) one of his favorite restaurants.  It looks like a nice spot and it might be interesting to find again.  I don't remember what it's called but I think it's something like "The Cistern".

After that, we took the tram back to the hotel and, after sitting around contemplating what to do with myself for the rest of the day, I went off on my own to explore.  I ran into a tiny gelateria on a back street who knows where and grabbed my gelato for the day, lemon and frutti di bosco, I think... and wandered around taking photos down driveways and into courtyards.

I managed to find a couple of big things to cross off my list including the Trevi Fountain (which was swamped with people, mostly tourists, mostly eating the expensive gelato sold right in the square around the fountain).  I found this Japanese woman amazingly diverting, as she was wandering around with three cones (with mini cones on top) in her two hands, looking for her family so that they could claim them as their contents melted down to her hands as it was very hot that day.  It was a great place for people-watching.  People contorting themselves in odd positions to get the right photo, a priest in a long white robe carrying a backpack and roller blades, and kids, bored at looking at old stuff (I'm guessing here).  I found them all much more interesting than the fountain, but here's a photo of it for good measure.

My next goal was to find the Spanish steps as they're just a bit farther north than the fountain but I wasn't trying very hard to get there in a direct manner, mostly just wandering wherever it looked interesting to go.  As I was standing at a large intersection getting my bearings, I saw a parade of cars pass, the first of which was flying the Chinese flag.  I'm guessing the ambassador or something like that was headed off, followed by about 7-8 other cars.  I went off in the right direction and found myself going up a slight incline, waving at people I passed and  ran into one of the four or so Aveda salons in Rome... which is situated, interestingly enough, directly at the top of the Spanish steps themselves.  The steps were nice but I didn't find them nearly as nice as the steps in Paris up to the big cathedral where the scavenger hunt in Amelie was filmed, as they don't go up steeply enough to actually see the full flight of steps from the base.  To see them properly requires being on the 4th or 5th floor of the buildings facing them (I'm guessing, anyway).

I wasn't aware that the area around the Spanish Steps was the high-class shopping district in Rome or the home of the Plaza hotel... but it is.  I wandered around, window shopping and wishing I had the money for the beautiful jewels in the shops and telling myself that it didn't matter that I didn't have the money as I didn't have anything to wear them with.  Oh well.  Apparently the Cow Parade is in Rome... again (?).  I found two of them near the base of the Spanish Steps and a few others around later on, one of the ones near the steps was cloud patterned and had a swastika carved into it (by someone other than the original artist, I'm guessing).

As I wandered through the high-class shops, I ran into what appeared a retrospective of police vehicles in Italy including an old car, motorcycles, and even a new SWAT type van with one of the iRobot (makers of Roomba) bomb robot things.  It looked like they were preparing for a big event.

The shop windows and displays are beautiful in Rome, an art in themselves.  Ties are artistically curved to show off their sheen and patterns and placed with careful attention paid to color coordination with the others in the display.

I arrived at the area in front of (what I later learned to be) the Parliament building to see a small gathering of people waiting around a smaller group wearing all black with black and white patterned scarves around their necks and heads, with "PALESTINE" embroidered on them in red, green and black lettering.  I wasn't sure what was going on, but I felt it would be interesting to stay and watch and see what would happen.  

What ensued was a dynamic performance by fourteen men and women discussing the state of things in Palestine, individual stories of Palestinians, and occasional bursts of song.  It was performed primarily in Arabic and Italian and only occasionally in English but the performance was enough to understand the idea of the stories without necessarily comprehending the meaning of the words.

The performers were diverse, though most appeared to be in their twenties or thirties and they were lead by an older woman who spoke both Italian and English and (presumably) Arabic who spent much of the performance sitting in the audience, watching.  Each of the members played a role, speaking a story or translating it from Arabic to English or Italian.  The performance moved through a variety of emotions; sorrow, joy, despair, anger, betrayal, hatred, fear, hope and love.  

I sat through it all, taking over 200 photos of the performance.  At the end, they joyously paraded and danced around their "stage", hopeful for the future of Palestine and its people.  They ran through the audience handing out more of the scarves they wore.  I got one while I was looking through my images, placed over my shoulders by one of the performers with a thank you.

After that, I wandered back in the direction of the hotel, called Ann as she'd been talking about this restaurant that, for 15 euro, gives you a huge anti pasta selection she was planning to go to that night so I could find out where they were and if they were still going.  Some of the other students had been talking about going, so I thought there'd be more people.  Ann and her sons were waiting with Lawrence in the Piazza Navone for one of his old students to join them for dinner.  I found them there and, after waiting a bit longer, we headed for the restaurant without him.  It was tons of food but I didn't think it tasted nearly as good as what the huge tables of Italians around us were having smelled. Oh, and on the way to the Piazza Navone, I saw my second film crew for the day.

After that we went to my second gelato stop for the night, a small place near the Pantheon that had really good gelato.  I think I had strawberry and peach.  That's a guess.  Afterwards, I headed back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Rome Day One... Ups and Downs

Monday morning, early... to Rome... I had to schlep all my stuff down to the train station with everyone else and hop on the 7:57 train to Roma Termini.  It was a long ride on a full train and I spent it reading Last Watch.  Upon arrival, we headed for our four star hotel, the Hotel Tiziano to check in and leave our bags.  My first room, 204 was really nice... there were two full beds and one twin but the twin was tucked in its own little corner, away from the others, which I liked a lot... Unfortunately, it was not to last. 

Shortly after we arrived, we left again, as this was going to be a long day of touring the ancient sites of Rome, as we headed to the Campo di Fiori one of the girls asked if she could switch rooms with me so that she could be with the other people in my room... Since I really liked my spot and she didn't know what their room was like because it wasn't ready for them, I told her that I'd think about it, hoping to see it later on before I decided... more on that later...

This marks the beginning of about two hours that were just awful... after we got to the Campo di Fiori, Ann talked for a minute and, when she was done and people were headed off to get some food from the venders, I asked her if she knew where there was a cash machine and rather than simply saying something like, "Sorry, no.  Look around and I'm sure you'll find one." She responded in a voice that sounded, I thought, like she'd had enough of me and just wanted me to leave her alone and acted like I'd asked her something almost offensive... seeing as she's been in Rome dozens of times and I've never been, I thought it was a fair enough question to ask.  Apparently she didn't think that was the case. 

I spent the next twenty minutes walking around looking for one... in tears.  It really doesn't help that that would have been completely prevented if she'd given me the 90 euro I was supposed to have for our meal allowance in Rome, which I still haven't gotten and we only have one day left.  It also didn't help that I was starting to think this whole trip was a mistake.  I've never been good at joining groups, finding friends, and generally getting along with people.  Now I'm in a foreign country with no family, no friends, and no Andy, and, since I don't feel like any of the people on this trip care to spend time with me, no one but myself. 

I spend most of my free time alone, no one asks me to join them for dinner or to go somewhere unless I'm right next to them, no one calls me or texts me.  I've asked people to do stuff with me and it seems like they usually don't feel up for it, if they're already going and I ask to go along, I feel like I'm just a tag-along.  If I don't make the effort to be with people, I end up alone.  Maybe it's not a fair way to look at things, as there are people who seem to care, or act like they care, but it only lasts for short periods of time.  When I'm not around any more, it seems like I don't matter.

At the time, I'd not had anything to eat at all, so you can imagine that a lot of what I was feeling was due to my general grumpy-ness when I've got low blood sugar issues but sometimes I can't help feeling invisible even when I'm not hungry.  Usually I just deal with it and try to do something on my own as I generally find things better when I'm alone because I don't have to go at someone else's pace and I can do what I want to without worrying about what they want but I still feel lonely.

After finding a bancomat and a sandwich (and gelato, which I didn't take a photo of because I was still weepy and depressed, mango and fruits of the forest) the group was to meet at Largo Argentina, a collection of ruins only a couple blocks from our hotel.  Then we walked past more ruins towards the Piazza Campidoglio and Capitoline Hill which were designed by Michelangelo... I think.  I wasn't too interested in listening to Ann talk about it.

It wasn't until we started heading to the forum that someone asked me what was wrong and it was my roommate from Santa Chiara who is nice and she told me that a friend of hers had been on this trip in the past and has had similar experiences with Ann.  She also said that I could walk around with her, but apparently that offer was only limited to the next five minutes because it didn't last long.  Not to mention that, only that morning, she'd left me in the room to head off to the train station with another girl rather than waiting for me.  Maybe people just don't see what they do but there are definitely people who want to spend time together and do so, and I'm not one of the people that anyone picked.

Anyway, between her gracious offer to let me walk with her and Lawrence saying that no one could forget me after I said that I felt no one remembered I was around and that I felt invisible, I was able to cheer up enough to start taking pictures of the Roman Forum, our next stop.  It was big and full of broken marble stuff.  It seemed that other people were more impressed with it than I was but I've found that to be pretty par for the course when it comes to Rome.  

What I found to be the most interesting thing is that it was all under river silt for years after the area was flooded by the Tiber.  Even today people are working to excavate the forum ruins from the muck of thousands of years.  As we walked out of the forum proper area, we saw a crew of people working through a guard fence.

We headed off through the Arch of  Septimus Severus towards the Arch of Constantine which sits very near the Colosseum, our next big ancient site for the day.  It was big and a bunch of it was closed off because they're in the process of putting in a platform that puts visitors over the center area where there would have originally been a floor and allows them to get a better look down into the under area where the slaves and animals were kept. 

After that, we went past two tall memorial pillars with carved figures running in a spiral up them in a counter-clockwise direction on our way to the Pantheon, which is only a few blocks from our hotel.  It was an interesting building with a hole in the center to let in the rain, which seems silly.  I bet it looks really pretty in a rain storm, though.

Dinner out at a sort of mediocre place, pesto pasta and a pizza.  Afterwards we went to a giant book store just down the street from our hotel that Ann said had a nice sized selection of books in English, which was true.  Unfortunately, they were quite expensive.  I didn't get any as I'm still working on my last Watch book and I stole a copy of Sense and Sensibility from the book trade at Santa Chiara before we left for Rome.  After that we got gelato, this time I got a photo.  Dark chocolate and the fruits of the forest.

Headed back to the hotel for an early night after our long day walking around Rome.

Churches and Markets in Florence

Early morning train rides... make me tired.  Especially when they're preceded by late nights.  Got up in time to head out for the train and discovered that one of my fellow students had gotten locked out of his room by his three roommates.  He was quite angry because he was planning to go to Cinque Terre directly from Florence (the destination for the day) and all of his stuff, including his wallet and luggage was locked in. He managed to contact one of his roommates to have them come back, but by the time he got there and they were able to head to the train station (it's a 15 minute walk at least, so I'd already left at his urging) he barely had time to get to the station.  They managed it, barely, arriving only about a minute before the train.

The ride was relatively uneventful, and upon arrival we made a quick stop at a cafe for some food.  We were supposed to meet in front of the Basilica of San Lorenzo at nine but we weren't paying attention to where we were going and ended up taking a bit of a detour.  We made it just fine, though.  

After talking about the church (we didn't go inside) we walked past the Medici Palace and went over to see The Last Supper by Andrea del Castagno at Sant'Apollonia, which used to be a convent.  It was a very beautiful work with amazing colors and shading.  On the way out I noticed an odd work, part of which is shown on the left, in which the infant Jesus appears to have lost something down the good Virgin's bodice while she just stares on, knowing he can do no wrong.  or something.

After that, we walked over to the Dominican monastery, San Marco, which is home to an amazing collection of frescoes by Fra Angelico, of which we were not allowed to take photos.  A lot of them looked pretty identical, anyway.  There was one in each of the 20-30 monk's cells plus a huge Annunciation at the top of the stairs.  Gabriel's wings sparkle due to the addition of mica to the paint.

After that we headed over to the Foundling Hospital, or Ospedale degli Innocenti, which was where people could take unwanted infants and put them on a lazy Susan for the church (or state?) to raise.  Despite being called a hospital, it's actually an orphanage and was designed by Brunelleschi, the same guy who made the dome of the Duomo.  

Then it was 11:40ish and time for lunch.  Some headed to make the climb up the 460 some-odd steps of the Duomo, some for lunch... I went off, alone, in search of water, as I was so parched by now I was having difficulty swallowing.  After a cash machine (bancomat!) and a couple blocks, I found a cafe with liter bottles and got myself one.  It was cold and delicious, and took me some work to actually drink because I'd been so thirsty.  

Free of thirst, I wandered around, took pictures, and got slightly lost.  I've decided that I really like all the signs in Florence.  They're very vertical and bright, sometimes, and generally only make much sense from one direction without a mirror.  They tend to be very generic and require that you get up close to see the name of the shop itself.  After finding myself... or, more accurately, the large plaza with the fake David and a homo-erotic statue of naked men just off the Ponte Vecchio, I found a small sandwich shop, one with raw ingredients rather than premade panini, and got prociutto and goat cheese on a very nice, thin foccia crusted with salt crystals.  The goat cheese wasn't the typical soft stuff you spread on crackers, but a thinly sliced, delicious block of white.  I plan to find it again on our third trip.

Gelato (numero uno) for the day sits on the left.  It's a dark chocolate ganache with the frutti di bosco, fruits of the forest, which I really like.  The combo was really delicious.  It came from the same gelateria I went to the first week in Florence.  Oh, the background for the image was really yellow, so this one's been Photoshopped to remove it.

After devouring numero uno, I found that Florence has a Grom (the gelateria with the all natural, organic ingredients from Siena), and decided I couldn't pass up the opportunity to have their Lemon Chill-like puckery lemon and get the raspberry I missed when we were in Siena.  It was as good as I'd remembered, though the line was significantly longer.  After lunch I wandered around more taking photos, occasionally running into classmates, more often alone.

Around two I headed in the direction of the Ponte Vecchio to meet the rest of the group at our last stop for the day, the Brancacci Chapel at Santa Maria del Carmine and the beautiful frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino.

After our fifteen minutes in the chapel (apparently you're not allowed to stay long) we were free to do what we wished.  I joined some of my fellows for a walk through the San Lorenzo market and it's amazing collection of stuff... one might even say some of it was junk to clutter up your shelves, but there were masks and leather goods, purses, belts and diaries of "Italian" leather, clothes and scarves, and knickknacks.  

The ride back was quick and dinner was very saucy rigatoni followed by roasted chicken and buttered vegetables (carrots, squash, and potatoes).  We had a real dessert tonight, ice cream sandwiches in honor of two birthdays.  I was so tired by the time dinner happened that, though I managed to stay up relatively late, I didn't do much other than talk to Andy and mom before dropping into my bed (no room mate this weekend because she ran off to Cinque Terre with Michael and some others) and sleeping until 10 am.  Which I'm going to do now, other than having to get up at 8ish to catch the train to Arezzo for the antiques market.

Arezzo, the City Next Door

Today was, as I mentioned yesterday, the city of Arezzo.  I heard someone say it has a population of about 78K people, which is several times larger than Castiglion but not nearly as large as Florence.  We took the 9:15 bus over, stopped for coffee and tiny sandwiches (they had the coffee, I had the sandwiches) and went to explore the town's three churches.  The first was the Pieve Santa Maria, which had some very nice stained glass including this one, which has bits that remind me of Frank Lloyd Wright's glass.

After, we went to our 11 and 11:30 (the class was split in two) vistits to see the True Cross Fresco in the Church of San Francesco.  Photography was strictly forbidden.  The frescoes were very interesting and unusual, and were very beautiful.

Afterwards, we headed off for lunch.  Seven of us, including our professors went to the small trattoria pictured here.  Everyone was pleased with their lunch.  I had ravioli stuffed with cheese and spinach served in a creamy sauce.  The foccacia served with the meal was fresh with a hint of saltiness and the variety of dishes was intriguing.  Besides the usual pizza and pasta, they offer boar, fresh mushrooms, and giant spaghetti noodles called pici.

After lunch, we didn't need to meet back again until our tour of Arezzo's Duomo at three, so we headed back towards the bus station where the lovely La Violetta Gelateria stands.  Not a lot of flavors to choose from, but some very unusual ones.  Today I had cacio e pere, which is a sort of soft cheese with pear, according to Ann, and my first repeated flavor, frutti di bosco, mixed berries.

After gelato we headed for Duomo San Donato, Arezzo's huge cathedral.  It's home to some amazing woodwork, stonework, frescoed ceilings, and a beautiful set of organ pipes (below).  The light inside was really low so even switching to my 1.8 lens didn't help entirely.  I ended up taking a bunch of photos of the ceiling using the lens on the floor, my remote shutter release, and a one second exposure.  The following two images were taken in the same place and light but they're very different due to the exposure length. 

The last stop before heading back to the bus and Castiglion was a small shop we'd passed a couple of times before called "The Magic of Oz" (but in Italian) that is home to all sorts of little figurines of faeries and Disney characters.  I took a brief look around it with Nick, Ann's younger son, and on the way out, noticed a tic-tac-toe set that matched my collection of little sheepies at home.  I asked the shopkeeper if they had any individual ones, and she took me to where they had a single one left.  A sheep standing on his hind legs with a shepherd's crook in his hand.  Perfect, I thought, for my little flock at home and he was only 4.50 Euros.  He's sitting on my shelf in front of my photos of my family.

Dinner tonight wasn't the best but wasn't bad by any metric.  Bow-tie pasta in a slightly spicy creamy tomato sauce followed by sauteed vegetables and chicken marsala, which had a lot of really nice mushrooms.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the Renaissance festival!  Much fun will be had by all.

Walking Tour

Missed breakfast, late for intro, tuna salad oddness for lunch (probably delicious if you actually like tinned tuna), no real seat in our photo intro because there are more people than chairs in the class.  That was all the not so great stuff.  Now that that's out of the way, gorgeous day, spent walking around Castiglion Fiorentino and seeing what it has to offer; which is odd, beautiful, and interesting things to photograph.  Roses, architecture, and vistas are all on offer.

Started the day with a quick wake-up to go to a brief intro that I wasn't aware of, so I was late and didn't know where it was.  Sat through another brief intro by the people who run the facility which was a bit dry.  Then an hour to walk around town, see all the shops that were closed for their mid-day siesta and head back to listen to an intro to photography.  Then more free time and more walking around.  Lunch was in there somewhere between walking and camera intros... not sure where.  Nothing to say about lunch. Dinner was much better: spiral pasta in a cheesy pesto sauce (no cream!), fresh vegetables in oil and parsley, and roasted pork with lots of herbs.

The gelato(es) for the day from the same local gelatteria as yesterday, which I now know is called Coco Palm... lemon and a berry blend called fruiti di bosce or something like that, literally fruits of the forest.  Very bright and clean for the late afternoon.